Advocate editorial board opinion: National ad garners support for fight against ALS

By the Advocate Editorial Board
Nov. 2, 2011 at 6:02 a.m.

Sometimes when something plagues the world, it takes a bunch of people to point it out. That results in people teaming up to fight the malady.

In the case of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, after the famous baseball player who was victim to the terrible, debilitating disease, momentum is building to find a cure.

We here at the Advocate are huge proponents of finding a cure for the disease. And we see others are joining the fight.

And driving power is daily building to overcome the malady.

In this case, we are referring to the ad featuring baseball great Nolan Ryan that aired during the 2011 World Series.

Having such a baseball star join in to support fighting ALS is a real plus. The more that famous people speak about finding a cure for the disease, the more the disease is exposed. And with hope, we will fight it together to find a cure.

In the Ryan message, Ryan says the effort to fight ALS is the best pitch he's made, and viewers could send a text message reading, "ENDALS" to 20222 to donate $10 to ALS research.

Ending ALS is not an unrealistic notion. It is a possibility within our grasp as long as the message remains strong: End ALS.

We congratulate Pastor Bill Hassel for coming up with the idea for a national public service announcement.

The Victoria resident, plagued with the disease, persisted through all kinds of hurdles and finally met success with getting the PSA aired. The ad was aired on Fox TV during the World Series.

And the message was so strong, one of the viewers who saw the story at victoriaadvocate.com wrote this: I want the Cardinals to win, but Nolan Ryan just melted my heart.

Well, the Cardinals won. And it seems the battle against AFL will be victorious, as well, as long as we all get on board to support research that would find a cure.

This editorial reflects the views of the Victoria Advocate's editorial board.